


thorns and ripped curtains and softly glowing pink things.

by colloquialrhapsodist



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:24:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4900201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colloquialrhapsodist/pseuds/colloquialrhapsodist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle is not content to sit and waste away while the worlds die around her.</p>
<p>An introspective depiction of that tumultuous journey to Hollow Bastion's library, so soon after the Princesses wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thorns and ripped curtains and softly glowing pink things.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this in April, and just cleaned it up today.

“That woman really – ” A huff and a puff, dangling her legs off of a short ledge, yellow puff of a gown bunching up around her knees. “ –  _really_  didn’t make it easy to live here, did she?”

Belle slides off of one of the great blocks just outside the corridor to the Castle Chapel. Her dress hitches up around her knees, and she stumbles to a standing position. Her fancy shoes dig uncomfortably into her heels. The other princesses are still in that great green room, the one that heaves with Maleficent’s presence. She so wanted to touch the walls, dark, livid green, powdered with the remains of her hate; they looked so beautiful and vile that she felt sure if she touched it she would prick her finger.

(“I wouldn’t recommend it,” the rose petal blond had said when Belle neared one of the intricate thorn carvings. “That woman has a nasty sense of humor.”

“It’s not surprising,” Belle said, and Aurora held up one finger in response, where an itty bitty puncture wound remained, small and puckered and red.)

She got antsy. There is strength in numbers, sure, but sitting pretty in a dark room where every one of them looked as though they were preparing to be struck by a bolt of lightning did not appeal. 

She’s quite done with being cooped up, thank you very much.

She makes her way to one of the spiky carved statues, made of some ancient rock that softly glows an electric blue, like a thunderstorm. A quick touch and the lift’s materialized in front of her. She steps on, adjusting one of the straps on her dress with a quick frown – but then she’s distracted by the sight ahead of her.

A deep breath.

The horizon expands for ages and ages, smoky and cloudy and tinted red-and-orange with the nearly-dusk that never seems to quite pass into night. She’s so terribly far up, she thinks, as the lift shudders into action and dips lower across the Great Crest, marked with that curious Heartless symbol. Breathing clouds, fresh wind that dusts roses on her cheeks. Even knowing the circumstances, even feeling the darkness tugging at her heart – that lonely feeling, the one that always felt like a solitary candle flickering in the shadows, and at first she thought it must have just been the Beast’s castle, but now she has the  _words_  for it, Princess of Heart – she’s riveted. She presses a hand against the force field of the lift, watching the ripples of blue fade back into transparency, staring at the great castle reveal itself before her.

She knows a thing or two about castles, you know. Big and dark and gloomy, with statues she’s frightened could come to life, gargoyles with cruelly curved horns and stone-hewn teeth poised for battle. Thorns and ripped curtains and softly glowing pink things, sometimes roses, sometimes hearts. Maidens held against their will, raising their voices against calls of their  _beauty_  and  _strength of heart_  when all they really want is  _out out out._

She thinks, not without a touch of sarcasm,  _Maybe Maleficent just needs love._

The lift glides to a stop, and she determinedly gathers her dress up in her hands and marches out. Even as the Keyhole seethes and writhes, there’s nothing to do but keep moving.

That’s what she had said to the other princesses, once they had all started rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, limbs stiff and tired from being locked in one position for so long. Belle had been the first up, walking with all the dreamy fascination of a sleepwalker to that big Keyhole, spitting darkness in flashes of green and purple and red. (That’s a funny thing about darkness, is one would think it would be all  _dark_ , wouldn’t it, just a void? But the Keyhole was beautiful, a rainbow of hunger.) And when she turned to meet the others that had all been trapped there with her, she was startled to think she, at twenty, might be among the oldest there – that little girl with thick blond hair and a blue dress that reminded her of her own couldn’t have been much older than ten. 

What was that witch doing, kidnapping children?

“How long have we been asleep?”was the first question, from Aurora – the most beautiful woman Belle had ever seen, golden hair and rose-red lips. “I… I can’t remember when the spell first came over me…”

“I don’t know,” Belle said, “I don’t know.”

“It mustn’t have been too terribly long ago,” said the ten-year-old. “Unless – you don’t suppose this is all a dream as well?”

“Goodness,” said the girl with raven-black hair and fair skin, holding a hand up to her lips.

“I feel… as though I’ve been dreaming forever,” said the strawberry blond.

“I remember how I got here,” said the girl with long black hair, too thick to be properly braided. “I… I don’t think it was that long ago. A boy kidnapped me from my home.”

(A boy. More children perched on the end of all worlds.)

A hesitation from the first woman. “I think… I was taken a long, long time ago. I don’t know how much time has passed. But it… it seems like an age I’ve been asleep.”

_Ten years_ , she’ll discover when she reaches the library. _Ten years of sleep, and they’d bring us all right back into it, if they could._

It is sad, but. She knows what it’s like to lose everything. She saw the darkness swallow up her own world before her very eyes.

Most of the others had, as well.

They are not the pretty women of storybooks, as much as the title  _Princess of Heart_  isn’t the gentle glow of a fairytale. They grieve. They take off their shoes and roll up their sleeves and smudge dirt across their pretty, pretty faces, and move on.

She’s stopped in her thoughts by a shudder ripping through the air, darkness pouring out of it, dumping a hulking beast with a monstrous shield in front of her. She freezes, and it lumbers towards her, the shield spinning.

“Oh, you darn  _Heartless,_ ” she breathes, and pulls off one of her aching shoes –  _kidnapped from her very own ballroom!_  – and throws it at the eye of the beastly thing. Two birds with one stone, after all, distract the creature and stop being hampered by those shoes ill-suited for creeping around a monster-infested castle – and she hops along, yanking the other one off with shaking hands and quick breaths. The thing’s shaking its head in aggravation, and sure, the shoe’s no more than a fly to it, but it buys her time, and that’s all she needs. She tosses the second one, and it bounces off of the Heartless’s skull – but she doesn’t stick around to watch, sprinting across the way, her feet slapping the cold metallic floor hard enough to make her wince.

Oh, well. She’s been asleep for so long. She can make do with just feeling things again, even if it’s few bruises and a flushed complexion.


End file.
